


If there was a me for you

by destinationtoast



Category: Ana Ng - They Might Be Giants (Song)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Magical Realism, Missed Connections, They Might Be Giants - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-12-11 14:45:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/destinationtoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story from Ana Ng's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If there was a me for you

The day the bullet comes through her floor is the day it starts. 

It’s like an itch she can’t quite reach to scratch, or like a sound just at the edge of hearing that she keeps straining to decipher. She feels like someone is trying to tell her something.

When it starts, there’s a bang, and then there’s just a hole in her floor and another in her ceiling, and she’s standing there in her living room, looking back and forth between the two. From the direction that the wood has splintered, the shot was clearly fired upward. And there’s nothing down there, no basement, just the concrete below her ground floor apartment. It remains a pleasing mystery, and though she means to patch them up, she never gets around to it. Instead, she takes to studying her medical texts sprawled out on the floor and picking absently at the edges of the hole on the ground. And she strains to listen.

“You’ll hurt your back,” her mother tsks on her weekly visit. “Sit at your desk.”

“Yes, Mother.” And she does, spine straight, until her mother leaves.

The itch doesn’t leave; it just grows more noticeable. She stares blearily at the water swirling in the sink one morning as she brushes her teeth before class and wonders what to do about it. School is hard enough without the added distraction, and her father is already pestering her about whether she’s studying enough, whether she’ll graduate first in her class.

Then she finds that she can scratch it, a little. When she travels East with her family to visit her grandmother in Shanghai, it lessens. When she stops to listen to a busker playing an accordion on the street, she feels a surprising sense of peace. 

There’s a small globe filled with glitter and a miniature New York City that she buys from a vendor at the local market, to the dismay of her best friend.

“What are you doing?” Mei asks. “That’s a complete ripoff. And you’ve never even been to New York.”

Ana just shrugs. She keeps the globe next to her bed, and at least once a day, she turns it upside-down and watches all the glitter fall the wrong way. In those moments, she smiles.

During classes, she is not as happy. Instead of taking notes, she doodles images that she can’t get out of her head. The planet. Flags. Dolls, endless dolls, mouths all hanging open. 

Her grades plummet. She doesn’t care, but her father will. She’s supposed to be a doctor, just like him. She doesn’t tell him.

Instead, she stops spending so much time with Mei, and starts hanging out more with Bao. The main advantage of Bao is that he drinks, and is always happy to supply Ana with liquor.

Once, when they’re very drunk, she tries to talk to him about her theory.

“Do you ever think that maybe there’s someone... Someone you were supposed to meet?”

He blinks at her in confusion. “What, like you forgot an appointment?”

Ana shakes her head impatiently. “No. Like, someone you haven’t met yet. But that you need to.”

“Like... your soulmate?” And suddenly, she realizes Bao is staring at her very intently, leaning closer toward her -- and her skin is prickling not in an itchy way, but in a panicky one.

“The record,” she points out nervously. “It’s skipping. Can you stop it, please?” Because the DUN DUN DUN DUN is pounding against her ears like a fist, and it’s drowning out the voice that she can almost hear, and she doesn’t want Bao and his stupid love of vinyl and all things retro getting in the way of the voice that is hers alone... the voice that someday she might actually understand.

She never tries to talk about it again.

She stops seeing Bao, and she pulls her grades up again to where they’re at least not embarrassing. But she isn’t less distracted, and she still feels a deep discontent. One day, as she waits in the humid air for the bus to take her to class, the wind picks up, and the clouds open. She cowers alone in the bus station, watching the torrential downpour and listening to the rumble of thunder. The streets are empty. The bus does not come. She sits there until her class is over and all the classes are over and it is dark out, and she watches the storm, and hearing the voice that's getting louder, that seems to whisper, _Listen_. She thinks about how untenable this situation is, and how much life has been exhausting her lately. It’s as if the bullet woke her up, and she hasn’t really slept since.

She decides to give this thing, whatever it is, one serious shot before abandoning her obsession. When the rain lets up, she goes home and purchases her tickets.

She tells three lies. She tells her family she is going on a school trip. She tells her school she is going somewhere with her family. She tells Mei that she is sneaking off to visit a boy, because she knows that’s the kind of thing Mei will understand and respect, and she can’t have Mei asking questions. Because the real thing -- well, Mei would not understand.

And then Ana is in New York City.

The first three days, she goes to all the places she has heard of, has seen on film. She waits, but she feels nothing, hears nothing, sees nothing unusual. There’s no itch -- no voice, even -- but her whole body is vibrating with her proximity to... something.

The final day she is in town, she closes her eyes as she leaves her hotel room, and she walks. When she opens her eyes, she is at a park in Queens. She stares at the giant hollow steel globe, the remnant of the World’s Fair, walks around it until she can see the location of her home, and sits on a bench. She is here. She can hear the voice, now, clearly, and what it says is true. She waits for more, full of longing and hope and expectation. 

After a while, she realizes she is going to miss her flight if she is not careful. But... nothing has happened. She takes a last look around, then hails a cab.

There is a traffic snarl on the way to the airport. They come to a standstill near the bridge. She looks out and spots a can of spray paint, and she asks the driver to wait.

“Not like I have any choice right now, lady.”

She hops out and shakes the spray can. She scrawls her message in inexpertly dripping paint, the thing the voice told her: _I don’t want the world -- I just want your half._ And as she writes it, it’s suddenly no longer true. She feels released, and she smiles a little at the driver as she gets back in the cab. He just shakes his head, like he’s not going to tell her she’s crazy and lose a tip. And then the traffic is gone, dissolving like it was never there. They’re racing alone along the streets, and every light is green.

As she stands in line to board the plane, she suddenly feels the pull again, stronger than ever, and she knows that the thing she missed is right there, within her reach. If she turns around now and goes back to the bench, it will be waiting for her. 

She hesitates for a moment, then hands her ticket to the woman behind the counter and walks down the jetway.

On the plane back to China, Ana feels freer than she ever has. She thinks about how easy it was to leave medical school, her family, and everything. To travel halfway around the world. She knows she can do anything. As she looks down on the tops of clouds, she wears the biggest grin of her life.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Lisa E. for the beta!


End file.
